onfim style study

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

HEY wanna read but annoyed on where to find copies of books?

Here's an archive with millions of PDFs of books and papers and magazines and essays and stuff.

The rules of the game are simple:

would love to but apparently it's paid now and has ranked competitive and coins and bullshit

Results! Turns out there's a free site called OpenGuessr that's just the classic gamemode we all know and love, but you can just play it for free like normal.

And I found some large friends on my very first leap!

Congrats! You win. And thanks for the info on the free alternative

if ur a trans man or transmasc fucking read this

Paywall-free link

Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey. Photograph by Daniel Ibanez, 2024

He wanted some McDonald's

Shashka saber with Mosin Nagant bayonet, Russian, 1935

AARON BOHROD (1907-1992) AND RUTH BOHROD TAPESTRY

Aaron Bohrod (1907-1992)

Circus Performers (1942-43)

A very rare, if not unique, hooked tapestry designed by Aaron Bohrod and worked by his wife, Ruth. This is the only work of art the two collaborated on. See page 16, Aaron Bohrod Figure Sketches, E. Elliot and H. Wooden, 1990. A copy of the book is included with this lot.

Measures 48 x 31 inches.

Soulis Auctions

The Return of Pansette

his name was war, your holiness, and I took him at his word. they took his leg at st quentin, and I held his hand until the bloody work was done. he swore he'd never stoop to till a field again. when last I saw him he had carved a cross into the birchwood lashed below his knee.

in spain before the storm we drank our fill and martin, always furtive, spoke of home in terms I recognized. we southern franks must watch each other's backs; in flanders I drove my spear into a flemish boy no older than myself because I saw his club raised up as if to strike martin.

his son was 2, or close enough to that when martin left with no intent to see his wife again - my love, avert your eyes - he did not hate her but he did not care to face his father. I could empathize. my father was the first to call me weak, fat, and gluttonous; an unfit heir.

can I be blamed, bertrande, for wanting this domesticity to never end? it did not feel like lying, not to you or to our daughter, nor to the boy, my son in everything but blood. he never knew the true martin, and would never have loved the man I knew before I took his name.

your holiness, I know I stand condemned before this parlement, and maybe god. naively I assumed the trade was fair: one Guerre would serve the lord, and one came home to cherish that which he had left behind. as if ordained by god above, I felt I was no fraud - I just was not myself.

I soon will hang, and thus you must admit there is nothing I'd gain from lying now, so believe me: it was in good faith that I contested my new father's will. my uncle - yes, I know that you object to being called my father's brother. well, you sound just like him when you spit my name.

I beg the mercy of the court to rule that when I hang the children won't be home. martin, if there was truth to all our talks and in old soldiers' solidarity - forgive your wife, and save your ire for our uncle, he who mocked my appetite and yet has proven hungriest of all.

I cannot dodge the gallows I have earned, but I refuse to die on false pretense. my uncle there will profit from my fall, and martin? I suspect will leave again. you all refuse to look me in the face from shame, perhaps, or maybe out of fear that you would recognize the man you saw.

who else read The Return of Martin Guerre in HS and has been obsessed ever since

LOUIS FRATINO

this ramadan we pray for peace and aid for the people of palestine. this ramadan we remember the previous ramadans, where thousands of palestinians were massacred. this ramadan we honour palestine, and may we see a free palestine next ramadan

Janie Mork (2011)

Rafał Dominik

I wish Americans fucked with more foreign music. You don’t have to know the language to appreciate a good record. Folks in other countries listen to our music and don’t speak a lick of english. Music needs no translator

yall wont trick me into listening to kpop

You can try Radiooooo.com - The Musical Time Machine!!

choose a country, pick a decade, and GO!!

you’ll get an endless streaming of songs (ad free!).

I personally found myself loving 1970s Ghana, Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire! Also 1920s and 1970s Japan for sure! Cambodian music: spectacular. Love Armenia and Mali as well. I’ve been told 70s Germany is weird and 30s Algeria is cool but I haven’t gotten around to those yet. Italy’s 1960s is bomb ofc but I’m biased ;)

This is the best website anyone has ever shared.

best care anywhere

(prints)

MASH | 4x20 The Novocaine Mutiny

I've talked about this before but I have a deep dislike of sentiment like this within "leftist" circles, regarding unions. And it's practically always from USamericans, go figure.

(Before anyone interprets this post on bad faith, which is inevitable, I am not against being in a union and I am not telling people not to join a union, it's the most inmediate form of protection workers have and that is, in fact, good)

It's this overbearing insistence on joining unions, treating it like the best (and only) way of achieving workers' liberation, and I think that shows either a bad understanding of what unions are or a bad understanding of how capitalism works. Unions are bargaining bodies for workers, that's it. They aren't revolutionary, and they aren't going to kill your boss. And I want to really hammer in this point. They aren't revolutionary. Precisely because their role is to bargain, and to achieve better conditions within the system of salaried work.

You are never going to "liquidate the ownership class" by getting longer breaks, paid holidays and an excellent health plan. Keep in mind, bargaining with the capitalist is necessary, and that in itself isn't non-revolutionary, not necessarily. But the only purpose of a union is to bargain. I really don't think people get this. A union's only purpose is to bargain, it is to negotiate. Negotiations also necessarily imply compromises and unsatisfactory deals. Unions are not a magic key to not being exploited, and they especially are not the way to liberation.*

I think this is especially prevalent in the US because of two things:

So you get people who call themselves communists just for being unionists. But a communist is someone who identifies the core of exploitation to be the very structure of capitalism and work and attacks it. You are not a communist, however, for believing the core of exploitation is your shit boss who refuses to pay for dental.

And what's funny is that 90% of what people on here claim to be communist and anti-capitalist is just the norm on most of the world. People will hype up the DSA or VoteSocialist2024 as if they're breaking ground, and then you read their programs and they're just socialdemocrats. They are nothing more than reformists, just another manager of capitalism.

My father works for one of the biggest textile manufacturers and distributors in the world, and unionization is the norm, it's a "union job" but it's still shitty and exploitative. There are in fact 3 unions, and they engage in petty electoralism within the workplace, only sometimes actually protecting worker's rights, and that's a country-wide norm. This is what unions end up becoming when they become established, especially with a friendly government in place.

CCOO was a union created in the late fascist dictatorship in Spain, and they were genuinely fighting (with guns!) against the dictatorship. And the moment the dictatorship ended and they became the largest union in the country, they slowly became less and less radical, and more complacent. Last year they signed a labor reform that legalizes highly precarious and inconsistent forms of work contracts. That's not "liquidating the ownership class", that's just social-democracy when it doesn't need to be the opposition anymore

To wrap up, a note on syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.

Unions are by their very nature an organization that only operates within one aspect of the life of the working class, the workplace. Sure, it's the main one and the part that defines us as a class, but it isn't the only one. In order to actually "liquidate the ownership class", you have to take power by force, and that will have to involve intervening outside of the workplace. What syndicalists used to claim is that unions can be the base of a socialist society and organize the entire working class to destroy capitalism. However, at that point, you have created a party and called it a union. And not only a party, but a myriad of them, each with their own characteristics and desires. So a multi-party system. I will not get into the viability of multiple parties in socialism in this post, but they are not unions in anything by name.

Footnote under the cut: